memory

Apple will temporarily close some of its retail stores tomorrow to coincide with the celebration of late co-founder Steve Jobs, which is taking place at Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters.

The Wall Street Journal says store employees were told over the phone about the closures, which have not been made public. The report corroborates a post from blog 9to5mac over the weekend that suggested stores were closing for approximately an hour to allow retail employees to watch a live Webcast of the memorial event. The Journal adds that the celebration could stretch to three hours.

Any closures would come on … Read more

The private memorial held for Steve Jobs was an intimate occasion full of tributes, music, and humor, a person who attended the service told The New York Times.

Friends, family, and colleagues gathered amid heavy security yesterday on Stanford University's campus to pay tribute to the late Apple co-founder.

Jobs' sister and noted writer Mona Simpson talked of being present during Jobs' last moments, and one of his daughters read from the script of an Apple TV commercial called "The Crazy Ones."

U2 front man Bono performed the Bob Dylan song "Every Grain of Sand," … Read more

As the tech world pauses to honor Steve Jobs, the state of California is also honoring the late Apple co-founder.

California Gov. Jerry Brown, in an announcement made on Twitter, declared today as "Steve Jobs Day" in the Golden State.

Silicon Valley royalty will be assembling today at Stanford University to pay their respects to Jobs at a memorial service organized by Apple. The company has sent invitations for the private event to some of the Valley's biggest names, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Also Sunday, the Discovery Channel plans to run an hour-long special … Read more

Silicon Valley royalty will be assembling Sunday at Stanford University to pay their respects to Steve Jobs, at a memorial service organized by Apple, according to a report.

The company has sent invitations for the private event to some of the Valley's biggest names, according to The Wall Street Journal, which added that guests were asked to respond to a philanthropic organization, the Emerson Collective, set up by Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell Jobs.

A small private funeral was held for Jobs last week and a celebration of his life is planned for Apple employees at the company's Cupertino, … Read more

I'll just come right out and say it: Eye-Fi cards are overpriced. They're incredibly convenient, no doubt about it, and I'll never use another camera without one, but the prices are just outta whack.

Today, they're a little less whacky. While supplies last, Sellout.woot has the refurbished 8GB Eye-Fi ProX2 SDHC Wi-Fi memory card for $49.99, plus $5 for shipping. Regular price: $99.99.

Crazy, right? You can buy a regular 8GB memory card for as little as $12, so who in their right mind would pay $100? Even $50 seems steep, but allow … Read more

The Patriot Memory Pyro solid-state drive (SSD) is the "budget" version of the Patriot Wildfire that was reviewed a few months ago.

While costing some 90 cents per gigabyte less than the Wildfire, the Pyro is still one of the most expensive SATA 6Gbps SSDs on the market, with the 120GB version being priced at around $200 and the 240GB version at around $430.

The drive's data transfer speeds were relatively slow compared with those of other SSDs of the same standard, including the Wildfire.… Read more

Despite a number of improvements to the hardware within the upcoming iPhone 4S, it's looking like one component that will remain the same is the amount of built-in memory.

MacRumors this morning points to a report from China-based AppVV.com, which seems to have gotten its hands on an iPhone 4S ahead of Friday's launch. The site has posted photos and videos of the device in action, including the new Siri voice assistant.

In a post over the weekend, the person with the device also notes that the device is packing 512MB of RAM versus the 1GB some had been expecting. That adds to comments made last week by the developer of the upcoming iPhone 4S-centric game Infinity Blade 2, who in an interview with Eurogamer floated the 512MB number as well.… Read more

Microsoft has tweaked the use of memory in Windows 8 to help people juggle more applications and files with less physical RAM.

In the latest Building Windows 8 blog, Bill Karagounis, group program manager for Microsoft's Performance team, detailed some of the tricks that the company has employed in the new OS to optimize the use of memory.

One such trick is memory combining. Windows applications can reserve multiple chunks of system memory, not just what for they need now but what for they may need in the future. The more apps that do this, the more memory used … Read more

Often at big product launches, the devil's in the details, and companies sometimes conveniently forget to mention some features that may be perceived as negatives.

In launching the Kindle Fire, the big headline for Amazon was the tablet's impressively affordable $199 price tag. As Jeff Bezos said multiple times, "We are building premium products and offering them at nonpremium prices," and it's hard to argue with him when it comes to both the Kindle Fire and the new e-ink Kindles. But now that some of the euphoria over the launch has ebbed, folks are starting to look more closely at some of the potential shortcomings of the device.

Big on my list is the limited 8GB of storage, with only 6GB usable (and no expansion slot) and the apparent lack of Bluetooth (Amazon does not list it in the specs).

Others have mentioned the fact that there's no camera or GPS. Those feature may be important to some, but you just wouldn't expect them to be there in a product at this price point. After all, the $249 Nook Color also left off the camera and Bluetooth. Interestingly, that device apparently has a Bluetooth chip, but Barnes & Noble has chosen not to activate it, so who knows, maybe Amazon is hiding one, too. … Read more